memorial day

lazy day reading blogs,

dianne is in the living room doing yoga with a video,

“inhale, upward dog…open your chest, breathe deeper…”

earlier this morning i ran for 90 minutes and averaged around a 9:45 pace.

then susan came over and we all went to the y and ran/walked on the the treadmills and talked about shopping. eddiebaueroutlet.com rules.

i almost felt like one of the girls for a flash.

“place the blocks against the wall, if you can’t raise your head off the floor…”

i’m noticing that my legs are more tired and stiffer doing the FIRST workout plan. i think that’s the natural result of increasing the intensity of my running days and adding spinning for the active recovery days. spinning will make my legs stronger (and is a nice break from walking lunges) and will increase my turnover.  

“press down through the hands and the feet…”

we’re getting together with kids and grandkids today to eat and  play.

i hope all of you have a nice day-off!

dianne is at the end of the yoga tape and at my favorite pose, shavasana (corspe pose). i’m going to go do yoga with dianne now!

happy running!

more intensity

intervals on wednesday; 4×5minutes hard then five minutes easy with a good warm up and cool down. spinning on thursday, which was really neat. i hadn’t done that for awhile and while i didn’t get winded in the same way i do when running,  my legs got worked out. today was a steady state run with miles 2-4 run pretty hard. here are the splits for today’s run:  mi 1: 10:12, mi2 ; 8:54, mi3: 8:51, mi4: 8:33, mi5: 10:07, mi6: 10:00. so far, i’m liking the new workout plan.

happy running!

what a day

today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing. also, my parents 66th wedding anniversary. who knew i would miss them so often and so much? i have some of my dad’s tools; chisels, power tools. i have stained glass windows from their house and my grandmother’s desk. and my siblings.

and i’m imprinted…i’ve been slowly hardwired.

for better and worse i am so like them. (!) 

well, have i run today? 8.5miles, some of them pretty fast.

what a day.

  

Change?

none of this is really news, my friends.

i read an article in runner’s world about running fewer days (3) per week and making those days more intense workouts, then crosstraining the other two days. the crosstraining days should have significant cardio activity. this also matches the advice and workout plans that coach gail, who’s advice i have not been listening to lately, has recommended. i haven’t paid gail much mind of late because i got a bit burned out and just wanted to run for fun and not mess with the watch, the pace, lactate thresholds or the heart rate. that burnout may have run it’s course.  now that it’s warmer out, it’s time to pick it up.

more on the details of the weekly workout plan later in the week.

last week’s runs were all gut wonderful. total miles for the week was 34.5 with my long run this week of 8.3 miles. a little of these miles, 5-6,  were ‘quality work’; the rest of them were opportunities to talk, catch up, and have some time to work off some mental static and relax. if this style of workout never changed that would be fine and dandy. this week though i’ll tweak it abit and see how this old bod holds up.

happy running! 

swimming in air

it’s been raining alot here. the lakes are finally full. even over-full.

the air this morning was visible; hanging there, too wet to move.

something else to push through. 

for the entire run, 5.6 miles, it smelled like wet dirt.  wet vegetation, living and not so much so.

it was beautiful.

happy running.

runbonkrun

Saturday morning i ran a 5k benefiting the private school that some friend’s kids attend. my time was not fast, however it was a very useful race. before the race, i ran for 28 minutes on the roads around the course, which was at lake grapevine and the terrain was rolling and green. that may have been to long to warm up, but i thought i would treat the race more like a workout that way. at the start i took off fast and tried to hold on to that fast pace as long as i could. 12 minutes later i had to walk for a minute, three times in all. i didn’t wear my garmin or heart monitor, just my watch, and this tiny race didn’t have mile markers so i was running (then walking) on feel. i guess it’s good that with the walk breaks and having no idea what pace i was running, i pulled out a 27:59. that’s just a bit faster than a glacier, but using the race like a training run and bonking at 12 minutes was good in terms of feeing the pace and just running for fun. i wonder what i would have run had i not come out to fast and  not warmed up as long.

i’m preparing a class on palpation and assessment at school in june. what fun. going through the textfor the class has reminded me of lots of material i had heard about and some i’ve tried but not used much. i took a workshop from the author in 1993 and it is a cherished memory. there’s so much to know and learn it makes my head swim.

happy running.